Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Vegetable Kit Kat - A Really Unexpected Kit Kat From Japan!!!

Ok, this is definitely one of the weirdest concepts for a Kit Kat that we have reviewed. One of the many specialty Kit Kats that are released in Japan regularly, this one was a joint venture between Japanese soft drink producer Ito-En and Nestle. For a little background, Ito-En is Japan's 4th largest soft drink producer in Japan (behind Coca Cola, Suntory and Kirin) and specialises in tea production, distribution and sales.

This product however has nothing to do with tea, as is clear from the name, instead it is based on one of Ito-En's famous Vegetable & Fruit Juices called Jyujitsu Yasai which I think basically means Ju Jitsu Vegetables... The Kit Kat contains extracts from apple, carrot, grape, lemon, celery, green pepper, asparagus, Chinese cabbage, kale and a bunch of other veggies in ever decreasing amounts. However, all of this is a bit deceiving as the predominant smell and flavour by far is apple, with carrot kicking in as a secondary flavour.

This Kit Kat has a white chocolate base and as you can see above, the Kit Kat is a mildly terrifying shade of yellowy-orange and it is also a similar yellow orange colour inside. As is typical for many Japanese specialty Kit Kats, it comes in super cute and high quality individual packages inside the main box (which in turn usually comes from a huge box...). Japanese spend A LOT of time on their packaging and making it super awesome! Not necessarily the most environmentally friendly thing but certainly makes for a pleasing experience when eating it.

Now down to the main question: "what did it taste like?". Well here's the surprise... it was actually pretty good! I mean it's definitely an odd flavour and there is a bit of a strange almost glycerine aftertaste, but overall the dominant apple taste makes it very fragrant and pleasant tasting and the secondary carrot flavour following through is not bad either. Most of the other likely to be gross flavours (at least when mixed with chocolate) like celery, green pepper and asparagus, are not really present to a level where they can be detected on the palate.

To see our full opinions and feedback on this extremely wacky, but somehow successful product check out our review below:

By the way, you may have noticed that I confused Jyujitsu Yasai to be an actual person, whoops...